1-Page Summary

Limitless by Jim Kwik is a self-help book that discusses meta-learning—that is, learning how to learn. In this book, Kwik teaches us how to quickly and effectively learn about any topic and then how to use that new knowledge to its maximum potential.

Kwik’s lessons are based on his own experiences. He suffered a traumatic brain injury at a young age, and from then on he struggled in school. When he went to college, Kwik realized that if he could learn how his own mind worked, he’d be able to learn and use his knowledge more effectively. Today, Kwik is a teacher, life coach, and motivational speaker. He credits his success to his ongoing studies of meta-learning, and he hopes to share what he’s learned through Limitless.

This guide will focus on five topics:

  1. Kwik’s model of limitless learning—we’ll introduce the main points of Limitless and give an overview of Kwik’s model.
  2. Mindframe—getting yourself into the right headspace to learn and to make the most of your knowledge.
  3. Drive—motivating yourself to learn: You have the ability to learn anything; even so, you’ll struggle with any subject unless you give yourself a reason to be interested in it.
  4. Technique—learning specific practices and strategies to reach your limitless potential, and finding which ones work best for you.
  5. Action—putting your new limitless learning into practice by making long-term plans and building the life you want.

In this guide, we’ll compare and contrast Kwik’s lessons with other popular self-help authors like Tony Robbins (Awaken the Giant Within) and Robin Sharma (The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari). We’ll also examine the origins of some of the key ideas in Limitless.

We Must Learn How to Learn

Most people put artificial limits on their learning: For example, they might think they’re too stupid to learn something, or too old to learn new skills, or just not good at a particular subject.

Kwik designed the Limitless model to eliminate those limits. It teaches you how to get into an ideal frame of mind for learning, and then use simple, practical techniques to learn and retain new information.

The Limitless Model

limitless-model.png

Kwik’s model of limitless learning is based on three components:

  1. Mindframe: This is about truly believing you have the limitless potential that Kwik discusses, as well as putting yourself into an open and productive frame of mind. In other words: You must believe that you can learn, and you must be ready to learn.
  2. Drive: Even once you know that you can learn anything in the world, you won’t learn something that doesn’t interest you. Thus, you need to find ways to motivate and convince yourself to put your limitless potential to work.
  3. Techniques: These are the practices and strategies you’ll use to learn new information quickly, and remember it permanently.

According to Kwik, you have to master each of the three components for the limitless model to work correctly because they’re interdependent.

Harness Your Thoughts, Feelings, and Surroundings

Kwik’s method for learning parallels Chip and Dan Heath’s method of reaching any goal in Switch. However, instead of components or stages, the Heaths describe three driving factors in your life that you must harness (a method that may be easier for some people to visualize than Kwik’s):

Switch says that when these three parts of yourself are in alignment, you’ll be able to accomplish all of your goals.

The Heaths’ main guidelines are:

One thing that Kwik’s model doesn’t include is the neuroscience behind how learning works. Dr. Barbara Oakley (A Mind for Numbers), a professor of engineering at Oakland University, has gathered a huge following by teaching about that exact topic.

According to Dr. Oakley, your mind groups related information into what she calls chunks, and then accesses that chunk all at once. As you create new chunks, you’ll naturally build upon old ones and access more and more information at once.

For example, if you’re trying to memorize a story, you’d probably start by memorizing the first sentence. As you continue working through the story, each new sentence or paragraph will naturally connect to the ones before, and so you’ll remember more and more of the story at a time.

The First Component: Mindframe

Mindframe is the first part of Kwik’s limitless model. Your mindframe is made up of your attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs, and it heavily influences how you interpret and respond to situations. Nobody’s born with a mindframe; you learned yours from the people around you and the culture you grew up in.

Kwik says that many people learned limiting mindframes when they were young. As children, we were all reliant on the adults around us for everything from comfort, to food, to emotional support. Therefore, we learned that we weren’t able to do most things for ourselves—and, unfortunately, many of us never fully moved past that limiting belief.

Psychology calls this self-limiting mindframe learned helplessness. Kwik prefers to call it a LIE—Limited Idea Entertained.

In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins suggests beginning to break the pattern of learned helplessness with a two-step process:

It sounds simplistic, but the act of consciously recognizing and fixing a problem will begin to show you that you’re not helpless, and that you can improve yourself and the world around you.

From there, you can apply that knowledge to your life more broadly, and recognize that the only limits on your abilities are the ones you put there yourself.

Different Types of Genius

One self-limiting belief you probably have is that you’re not a genius. Kwik says this is a common belief because people tend to associate genius with one specific measurement: IQ. Therefore, unless you’ve scored especially high on an IQ test, you probably believe that you’re not a genius.

However, Kwik tells us that experts recognize four different types of genius.

(Shortform note: In fact, the idea of four types of genius has existed for at least 5,000 years; researchers have found the concept in ancient Chinese and Indian writing.)

In his blog, Kwikbrain, Kwik notes that it’s important to figure out which kind of genius you are, because that will inform how you approach challenges.

For instance, it wouldn’t make sense for a dynamo genius to try to learn about computers by studying the intricate details of how they work—he or she would be much better off studying broader concepts like what computers can already do well, and what about them still needs improvement.

Different Types of Intelligence

The four types of genius are about how you use your intelligence; however, Kwik notes that there are different types of intelligence as well. In fact, experts commonly recognize eight different types of intelligence:

  1. Spatial. Spatial intelligence is about understanding and using the space around you.
  2. Bodily-Kinesthetic. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence is about physicality—how well you can use your body.
  3. Musical. Musical intelligence is about sensitivity to pitch, tone, meter, rhythm, and so on.
  4. Linguistic. Linguistic intelligence is about understanding implications and subtext, not just the literal definitions of words.
  5. Logical-Mathematical. Logical-mathematical intelligence is about seeing the connections between different concepts or actions, and extrapolating based on those connections.
  6. Interpersonal. Interpersonal intelligence is about empathy and connection with other people.
  7. Intrapersonal. Intrapersonal intelligence is about understanding and managing yourself; your thoughts and emotions. People with strong intrapersonal intelligence tend to stay calm even under intense pressure, because they recognize and deal with their own reactions internally.
  8. Naturalistic. Naturalistic intelligence is about recognizing the detail and variety in nature.

Kwik suggests taking a moment now to consider which of these types of intelligence you lean toward.

(Shortform note: Identifying your strengths, and making choices that complement those strengths, will give you a significant advantage in life. For example, if you have exceptional Naturalistic intelligence, you might find your calling as a biologist or a botanist. Or, if you’re highly Interpersonal, consider ways that you could leverage your people skills to reach your personal and professional goals—getting help and support from the right people, for instance.)

Different Models of Intelligence

The “types of intelligence” model in Limitless is known as Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences; however, while Gardner’s Theory is very popular, some experts believe that it’s inaccurate or too restrictive to reduce a person’s intelligence to a collection of skills.

For example, in Make It Stick, the authors describe the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence, which is more about what types of problems you’re good at solving, rather than what specific skills you’re good at.

According to the Triarchic Theory, there are only three types of intelligence:

Robert J. Sternberg, who developed the Triarchic Theory, based it on research he performed in Kenya. He also concluded that the types of intelligence people displayed were based more on how they were raised, rather than natural abilities—whether they were raised to value academic learning or practical skills, for example.

Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset

Kwik says that many people don’t recognize their own genius and intelligence because they’re locked in a fixed mindset: They believe that their mental abilities simply are what they are, and there’s no way to change that. For example, someone who says he’s “not good at math” is in a fixed mindset: He doesn’t think that it's possible for him to become better at it.

The truth is that it’s always possible to improve. This is what’s called a growth mindset: the understanding that you can develop your skills and talents. In other words, you can make yourself smarter with hard work and effective learning methods.

Psychologist Carol Dweck coined the terms “fixed mindset” and “growth mindset” in her book, Mindset. Dweck acknowledges that people do have different innate abilities and talents; however, she adds that our minds can develop to a much greater extent than was previously believed.

Furthermore, Dweck says that a growth mindset doesn’t just make you more ready and able to learn, it makes you more resilient against failures and setbacks. For example, if someone with a fixed mindset receives criticism at work, he would take it as a sign that he’s a failure who can’t do his job correctly. Someone with a growth mindset would take it as a chance to learn and improve.

Free Your Mindset

In order to reach your limitless potential, Kwik urges you to find and reject your self-limiting beliefs. There are three steps to this process:

1. Identify a limiting belief. Start looking out for times when you tell yourself that you can’t do something. Look out for phrases like “I can’t,” “I don’t,” and “I’m not.” Don’t limit yourself in any way, even with things that you don’t think are all that important.

(Shortform note: We may hold limiting beliefs about other people as well as ourselves. For example, someone who grew up with abusive or absent parents might believe that other people aren’t trustworthy, or that authority figures are all malicious. Such beliefs may hold us back just as much as doubts about our own abilities do.)

2. Find the facts. One of the fundamental aspects of limiting beliefs is that, quite often, they’re simply untrue. Oftentimes, what you think are facts about yourself are actually opinions—and those opinions are frequently wrong. Therefore, it’s crucial to ask questions that get to the truth of the matter.

(Shortform note: One useful question to ask about your beliefs is, “According to whom?” For example, if you believe that you’re not smart enough, ask whose standard of “enough” you’re using—you’ll probably find that it’s just your own impossible-to-meet standard, rather than objective reality.)

3. Form a new belief. Now that you’ve labeled your self-limiting belief and studied the truth behind it, you’re ready for the most important step: replacing it with a new belief that’s both more accurate and more helpful to the limitless person you’re trying to become.

Tony Robbins (Awaken the Giant Within) says that many beliefs—especially limiting beliefs—come from applying past experiences too broadly. For example, a child who finds that she doesn’t like carrots might conclude that she doesn’t like any vegetables, and will refuse to eat them.

Robbins suggests breaking out of those beliefs by using imagination, rather than experience, as your reference point. Instead of remembering how much she hated carrots, that child might imagine how delicious some new vegetable dish might be; her imagination will then make her eager to try it.

Kwik offers one more tool you can use to overcome self-limiting beliefs: Separate your inner critic from yourself. Give your inner critic a persona and identity that’s completely separate from you.

First, find that voice inside of you that says you can’t do something, or that you always screw up when it counts. Now give it a ridiculous name, and imagine it as a person with cartoonishly exaggerated features. Make fun of its negativity, and roll your eyes at the ridiculous things it tells you about yourself.

In short, turn your inner critic into something that you simply can’t take seriously. By doing so, you’ll dramatically decrease its power over you.

Remove the “Self” From Your “Self-Critic”

Rather than caricaturing your inner critic, in The Willpower Instinct, Kelly McGonigal advises redirecting your thinking. She suggests this three-step process:

By taking the focus off of yourself, you’re able to take a step back from the situation and stop criticizing yourself so harshly. Furthermore, by imagining that it’s someone else who indulged a bad habit instead of yourself, you may find that you have a clearer idea of what helpful advice or support you could offer.

The Second Component: Drive

Kwik says that, with a limitless mindframe, you understand that you can accomplish more than you ever thought was possible. However, knowing that you can do incredible things is only the first step; the next is to figure out what you want to do. In other words, you have to find your motivation.

According to Kwik, knowing what motivates you is a matter of identifying four things:

1. Your purpose: What you do. In other words, what are your goals in life, and how will you work toward them?

In The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, Robin Sharma suggests finding your purpose by keeping a Dream Book:

2. Your passion: Why you do what you do. In other words, what gets you excited? What makes you want to work?

Counterpoint: Design Your Passion

Designing Your Life argues that passion isn’t something you find; it’s something you create by carefully planning and building the kind of life you want to live. Doing so requires a major shift in thinking—going from a mindframe of “find your passion and everything will work out” to a mindframe of:

Designing Your Life asserts that passion is the result of a fulfilling life, rather than the cause of it.

3. Your reasons: Your reasons are like your passions, but much more specific. Your reasons are what get you up and working at any given moment, especially when you’d rather be doing something else. For example, someone might become a veterinarian because she’s passionate about animals; however, the reason that gets her to work each day might be that she’ll have a chance to save someone’s beloved pet.

Our Reasons Come From Pleasure and Pain

In Awaken the Giant Within, Robbins says that all of our motivations—which is to say, our reasons for what we do—boil down to two things: seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. According to Robbins, all of our more complex motivations (like the vet who goes to work each day to save people’s pets) come from pleasurable or painful associations that our minds create.

For example, perhaps the vet feels a thrill or a sense of great satisfaction when she’s able to save an animal’s life. Those are pleasant sensations that she associates with her job, so she continues doing her job in order to experience those sensations.

Furthermore, Robbins says that if you want to do something but are having trouble finding the motivation to do it, you probably have conflicting associations. To continue with the vet example, if she has trouble getting going in the morning, it may be that the pleasure of helping pets is conflicting with the pain of another tiring day dealing with demanding human customers.

4. Your values: Values are about who you are as a person. In other words, what’s truly important to you? Also, Kwik notes that you must recognize whether each value is a means value or an end value—in other words, is your value just a step toward something else, or is it an end in itself? For example, “popularity” is a means value; it doesn’t achieve anything on its own. The end value it’s working toward might be “acceptance,” “belonging,” or “confidence.”

Find Your Values

It seems like understanding your own values should be easy, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes we value things without realizing it—especially if those values are selfish, like valuing popularity or control. We often hide such unconstructive values from ourselves in order to protect our self-image.

In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson suggests finding your values by starting from your emotions:

Manson believes that our thoughts and feelings are ultimately rooted in our values. Therefore, by working backward from our feelings, we can determine what our values actually are, and change them if necessary.

Set SMART Goals

Kwik believes that, by setting good goals for yourself, you’ll naturally create your own motivation to reach them. To help guide your goal-setting process, he suggests following the practice of many businesses and using the acronym SMART:

Even if your goals meet all of Kwik’s criteria, you might still find yourself struggling if external forces have too much influence on them. In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins adds a couple of other qualities that good goals should have:

Robbins also echoes Kwik’s point that having meaningful, challenging goals is an effective way to create motivation for yourself.

The Third Component: Techniques

So far we’ve discussed getting yourself into the proper mindframe to learn and work, and getting yourself motivated to do so. However, Kwik insists, those two things won’t get you very far without the third learning component: Technique.

You could think of it this way:

Learn How to Study

The first strategy Kwik presents is a series of steps that prepare you to learn and maximize your retention.

There are six steps to Kwik’s strategy:

1. Clear your mind. There are three things you must let go of in order to fully focus on the topic at hand: What you think you know about that topic, anything unrelated to what you’re studying—including upcoming obligations or concerns that might distract you—and your own perceived limitations.

(Shortform note: Kwik’s advice to clear your mind strongly resembles the old Zen proverb of the empty cup: Just as you can’t add tea to a cup that’s already full, you can’t add new information to a mind that’s already full of old ideas. Therefore, forgetting what you think you know is a learning tip that’s well over a thousand years old.)

2. Involve yourself. Learning is an active process, so figure out how you can become more involved in your own learning. Perhaps you could take notes, discuss the material with your teacher, or work through some exercises on your own time.

(Shortform note: We’ll discuss active learning in greater detail in the section “Train Your Memory.”)

3. Choose to be interested. Get yourself into the right mental and emotional state to learn; consciously choose a state of joy, curiosity, and interest. One easy way to practice State is to trick your body into thinking that you’re excited—lean forward in your seat, change your breathing, or make the face you’d make if you were completely enthralled.

(Shortform note: You can use all sorts of physical cues to trick yourself into the mental state you want at any given time. For example, studies show that a fake smile can put you into a genuinely better mood.)

4. Relay what you’ve learned. Study new information with the intent to teach it to somebody else—actually do teach it to another person, if possible.

(Shortform note: Studies show that teaching others helps you to retain what you’ve learned. In the linked study, students who taught others didn’t do significantly better in the short term than those who only learned the material themselves; however, when tested again a week later, those who had taught the material to other students remembered a great deal more of it.)

5. Schedule your study times. Get a calendar and enter times to study, just like you’d enter important meetings or appointments. This will help you to develop good, regular study habits.

(Shortform note: Self-help experts frequently say that it takes about 21 days to form a healthy new habit. However, in reality, it might take much longer. One study showed that it took an average of 66 days (and, in rare cases, as long as 254 days) for a new behavior to become a habit. Therefore, it’s important not to get discouraged when your new study practices don’t feel habitual after just a few weeks.)

6. Repeat what you’ve learned. Periodically going over your notes—or just thinking about what you’ve learned—will help you to recall that information when you really need it. One simple way to review is to set aside a few minutes before you begin a study session, and use that time to think about what you learned in the previous session.

(Shortform note: Rote learning (also called rote memorization) involves repeating facts until they stick in your mind, which is generally considered to be an ineffective study method. In other words, rote learning uses only this final step, while Kwik’s method uses all of them.)

Take Good Notes

Kwik believes that taking good notes is a crucial part of any attempt to learn. Therefore, he offers these three guidelines for effective note-taking:

There are many different theories about how to take effective notes. The Cornell Note Taking Method, for example, offers much more specific advice than Kwik’s general guidelines.

The Cornell Method is based on the so-called “5 R’s of note-taking:”

Train Your Memory

Kwik notes that many people try to learn new information by rote memorization: repeating something until it sticks. However, rote learning is ineffective because you’re basically trying to bully your brain into accepting the information.

In contrast, in active learning, students actively participate in the learning experience; for example, through in-class discussion or self-chosen projects. Active learning is much more effective (and enjoyable!) than rote memorization.

Counterpoint: Studies have shown that rote learning is extremely effective when studying foundational concepts, such as the alphabet or the Periodic Table.

However, the more advanced and complex a topic is, the more rote learning falls short of active learning (or meaningful learning, as some call it).

Here are a few methods Kwik recommends for taking an active role in your learning:

Visualization

Instead of just reading words on a page, or hearing them spoken, Kwik recommends engaging your visual memory—imagining the picture that those words paint, rather than the words themselves. That picture will be much easier to recall than the series of words that created it.

To illustrate this point, take a moment right now and think of your bedroom. It’s a fairly safe bet that you came up with a mental image, rather than a collection of words like bed, dresser, nightstand, and so on.

How Do You Learn?

Kwik is describing visual learning, a learning style in which students benefit from seeing graphical representations of what they’re studying (pictures, charts, maps, and so on). In essence, he’s suggesting that you harness visual learning by creating those graphics yourself, in your own mind.

Experts now recognize that visual learning is just one of many different learning styles. For example, the VARK model says that there are four major learning styles (Visual, Auditory, Reading/writing, and Kinesthetic). Another model adds Logical, Social, and Solitary learning styles (and replaces Reading/writing with the more general Linguistic learning style).

Consider which learning styles you seem to favor, and try to come up with an equivalent to Kwik’s “visualization” technique for those styles. For example, if you’re a kinesthetic learner, you might find it helpful to associate a simple hand movement with a difficult concept—later, when you need to recall the concept, perform that hand movement and it should spring to mind.

Association

Kwik believes that association is the basis of all learning—in order to learn new information, that information has to be connected to something you already know. Therefore, you should always try to link any new information to something that you already know about.

Pavlov’s famous dog experiment demonstrates a very basic form of associative learning: Dogs learned to associate food (something they already understood) with a particular sound (which previously had no meaning to them). Once they formed that association, hearing the sound would make them think of food and begin to salivate.

Kwik is suggesting that you use a similar method to link concepts in your own mind. For example, you may not know what a derivative is in calculus, but you probably know what graphs and slopes are; therefore, you can understand that a derivative is the slope of a graph. Now, hearing the word “derivative” (which previously had no meaning for you) will bring that concept to mind.

Emotion

Information is forgettable; however, Kwik argues, feelings are memorable. If you can add emotions to what you’re learning—make it exciting, adventurous, or poignant—then you’ll be much more likely to remember it. That’s why, for example, people frequently come up with humorous acronyms.

In fact, you’ve probably experienced this phenomenon before. To illustrate the point, think back to a time when you got some extraordinary piece of news (either good or bad). You probably remember where you were and what you were doing at the time, even if it was many years ago.

(Shortform note: Memories linked to extraordinary moments are sometimes called flashbulb memories. Flashbulb memories are the reason why, for example, people say that they’ll never forget where they were when they heard that JFK had been shot—or, to use a more recent example, when Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crashed.)

Limitless Thinking

Finally, Kwik shifts from discussing how to learn to discussing how to think. Now that you’re capable of learning anything, the next step is using all of your new knowledge to its maximum potential.

In other words, in this final section, Kwik teaches you how to move from limitless learning to limitless action.

Think Exponentially

Kwik urges us to stop thinking incrementally (one small step at a time) and start thinking exponentially (each step bigger than the one before it). According to Kwik, exponential thinking leads to world-changing innovations and billion-dollar companies.

Entrepreneur Mark Bonchek first wrote about developing an exponential mindset to complement the exponential growth of technology. The crux of his argument was that many businesses fail because they have incremental mindsets in an exponentially advancing world. Bonchek encourages business leaders to make strategies that grow slowly at first, but lead to ever-accelerating rates of return.

However, Bonchek’s method claims that you can’t predict the future while using an exponential mindset—he likens an exponential growth curve to a bend in the road that you can’t see beyond. In contrast, Kwik’s model is all about predicting and planning for the future, as we’ll see shortly.

Exponential thinking encourages us to look beyond the immediate problem and instead seek the root cause of that problem. Solving the underlying issue will most likely have a much greater impact than just fixing the current problem.

1. Find the underlying problem. The problem you’re trying to tackle might not be the real issue at all, so look for a root cause. For example, if you’re trying to reduce air pollution, you might tackle that problem at the source by addressing “dirty” energy sources like coal and oil.

Kwik urges us to look for root causes, but doesn’t provide much guidance on how to do that. The Design of Everyday Things suggests finding the root cause of a problem by continuously asking “why.”

For example, if the problem you’re trying to solve is that you always buy unhealthy fast food on the way home from work, your “root cause analysis” might go something like this:

Why am I buying fast food?

Because I’m hungry.

Why am I hungry?

Because I haven’t eaten in a while.

Why haven’t I eaten?

Because I was at work.

Why did being at work stop me from eating?

Because I didn’t have food there.

Why didn’t I have food at work?

Because I didn’t bring any.

You could continue with this line of questioning (“why didn’t I bring food to work?”), but the solution to your underlying problem should be clear by now: Bring your own food to work, and you won’t be tempted to buy junk food on the way home.

2. Ask “what if.” This isn’t just about asking what might happen if you do one thing or another; try to come up with extreme, and even outlandish questions. These seemingly strange questions will get you thinking along different paths than everyday linear thinking would. For example, instead of looking for cleaner energy sources, what if we could make a society that didn’t need electricity at all?

(Shortform note: An article from Forbes offers one reason why “what if” questions can be effective brainstorming tools: they encourage you to approach the situation with an open mind. When you ask yourself “what if,” you let go of your ideas about what’s possible or feasible, and simply try to answer the question.)

3. Study. Now that you’ve found the root problem and thought about some hypotheticals on your own, it’s time to see what other people have to say about that situation. Try to get a well-rounded view of the issue by studying many different (reliable) sources.

(Shortform note: One of the internet’s major pitfalls is that you can find sources supporting any idea or theory you can imagine, no matter how outlandish. Therefore, it’s important to vet your findings, and to take information only from reliable sources. This article from the University of Georgia offers some pointers; most importantly, checking a site’s credibility and the author’s credentials before taking anything on that site as fact.)

4. Imagine what’s next. By now, you should at least have an idea for a solution to the problem you’re tackling. However, before you implement that solution, you should try to envision both the short-term and long-term consequences of it. Note that the short-term consequences might feel like a step back, rather than progress; however, the long-term results of solving an underlying problem will probably go well beyond the immediate issue you were trying to tackle when you started this process.

Again, Kwik provides a general guideline (imagine the long-term consequences) without offering much concrete advice about how to do it.

One Forbes article suggests a 5-step process for creating and implementing a long-term plan (while this article is specifically about running a small business, the process applies to any kind of plan):

Plan Exponentially

Kwik’s previous model was designed to help us tackle specific problems. However, we plan out courses of action all the time, even when we’re not responding to some dire or complex problem. For example, we might plan the most efficient route to run our errands, or a student might need to plan out what courses he or she will take in the upcoming semester.

Therefore, Kwik encourages you to apply exponential thinking to every plan you make—a practice he calls exponential planning.

Exponential planning is significantly more difficult than short-term, incremental planning. However, Kwik argues, exponential planning gives you insights that other people don’t have; therefore, it allows you to plan for the future much more effectively than others. Kwik promises that, while other people’s situations improve incrementally, yours will improve exponentially—getting you ever closer to reaching your limitless potential.

Counterpoint: In Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb repeatedly says that predicting the future is effectively impossible. Furthermore, predictions become less and less accurate the farther ahead they try to look—there are simply too many variables for any model to get an accurate picture of the future.

Therefore, rather than trying to predict the long-term outcomes of your actions, Taleb urges you to maximize your options and your flexibility, so that you can take advantage of whatever ends up happening.

For example, when a student is applying for college, she shouldn’t just apply to her one favorite school; if that school doesn’t take her, then she’s at a dead end. Instead, she should apply to many different schools—each one that accepts her is another option for the future, and she can then pick her favorite from among those options.

Exercise: Unlimit Yourself

According to Kwik, becoming limitless starts with your mindframe—you have to overcome your self-limiting beliefs.